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THE DESTINY 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

VAGARIES . . . . ^i .00 



Small Maynard & Company, Boston 



THE 
DESTINY 

AND OTHER POEMS 
BY FLORENCE BROOKS 




BOSTON 

SMALL MAYNARD 

& COMPANY 

1901 



CONTENTS 



THE DESTINY 

PAGE 

I The Wanderer 3 

II Sonnet 6 

III The Story 7 

IV Song 18 

V Song 19 

VI Song 20 

VII Song 21 

VIII Ode 22 

IX Sonnet 26 

X Song 27 

XI Song 28 

XII Farewell 29 



II 



The Room ... 33 

The Pool 35 

The Bed 38 

Prelude 40 

Birth 44 



III 



The Passion 47 

Sapphics 48 

C. B 49 

Kalamazoo 50 

Ghazels 51 

VII 



IV 

Flos Florum 

Songs ^^ 

Autumn Heart ... ^l 

„ 58 

Oblivion z. 

Venit Rex . 5^ 

The Poet , 

Love of the Night . 66 

At Last • - • 

Eleanor ' ,^ 

Resurrection • • • . 

Abjuration • • . . 9 

The Two Ways .... . .' ' .**.'"" ^° 

Second Winter 

The North ^^ 

In Church ! It 

Ode to the Mountains ! 

Diabolus Advocatus 82 

Prayer .... 
°4 



The Lost Continent g_ 

Bondage .... 7 

Postponement n 

Assurance 

Missed Affinity .'."."'" i 

Sonnet . 

92 



THE DESTINY 

I 

Unbounded though he wander, memory 
Hath bound the immortal sinew of the man 
To mortal past of granite wall and moat; 
To the stern warring heart of ancestors ; 
To feudal centuries and to the law. 

Sailing from out the miasmatic mist 

Of sad, strange shores his memory gropes ahead 

Beyond the prow. . . . O twilight luminous. 

Reach thou for him thy whisper through the dark! . . 

The lilac waters wash the twilight land 

Lying across the prow; the wanderer views 

The soft dove-coloured sky, the brooding trees. 

The isolate spires that guard the cozy roofs 

Of a low candle-lighted town. His heart 

Lingers and shrinks. ... O he has tasted wine 

And blood! Between fierce gulps and gasps he lived 

In hot exotic lands until his soul 

Was fire and burned the fabric of his life. 

So sad, so heavy hangs the lusting heart 
For life within him watching on the deck 
In half dream at the mooring in the dusk. 
To feel the peaceful night enfold him there 
Without a promise for the after days 
His tireless fancy reaches toward! These days 
Of ordered trifles! God! How he shall long 
For the erratic ardours of the past ! 
3 



Free, free, free, free to roam the seas and streams. 
To cleave the giant forests, to descend 
From hostile heights, an eagle in the wilds. 
Into the treacherous plain where savages 
Shall spring to spear or knife or assagai! . . . 
God ! To be knife to knife and hand to hand 
In the fierce sensual intimacy of the fight. 
To brave the warring brotherhood of man, 
Immingling sinews in a long embrace 
Where death is passion ! Eye to eye he strave 
In ardent hatred in the mortal game 
Where life blood was the currency! The man 
Thrills to remembered touch of flesh to flesh. 
The push of arm against the panting side. 
The intimate slow strain of strength to strength 
Satiate in blood and sweat. 

Against the mast. 
With all his mind adream of stirring days. 
Of swift or slow frill days, he meditates 
On wonder and on wisdom. He has learned 
Out of the subtle mouths of many priests 
And many women. . . . What forbidding doors 
Are open to his fancy! Treasurings 
Of music and of dream he would not grasp 
Are his to breathe and brush! What barricades 
That blind the peering eyes of smaller men 
Are hurled chaotic in his thought! The flash. 
Lurid and livid, of wide undreamed wastes. 
Blotted with ancient gloom, his spirit sees. 
He sees the maddened eyes, the frenzied look 
Of warriors, and he knows the crouching thing 
4 



That slaves or bends or begs, or is ignored. 
The knavish female or the bright-eyed child 
With small bare breasts, before she sets her fate 
Beneath her master's. . . . His the mastery 
Above them all! . . . 



II 



Weave me a lovely story, O my love. 

Of still soft villas by the Ultramar, 

Of blue-green seas where you have voyaged far 

To reach the alluring land of lemon grove 

And flashing love-birds, where the coo of dove 

Throbs through the South of glowing sun and star. 

Where among glittering palms the dark men war, 

O whisper breathless tales of how you strove. 

Of mighty river forces sing the story. 

Of slow, swift floods and far shores many-hued. 

Or on the heights where scarlet orchids gleam 

To match your quenchless fire, in my sweet dream 

Let me behold the vision of your glory 

And share the soul of your great solitude! 



Ill 



The wanderer sees in vision. 
Lying upon a strange distorted shore 
By a great rushing river, his own shape. . . . 
For steakhy nights had robbed him of his health 
While savage suns consumed him all the day. 
He was deserted, wrecked with weariness ! . . . 
What impotent dumb weakness stupefied 
His daring brain? What languor made his arm 
Forget the weapon? Why must he relinquish 
All he had clasped in passion, or had crushed 
In rage consummate? 

Thus the wanderer 
Among the reedy grasses, overhung 
By the scant sadness of an isolate palm. 
Heard with unhearing ears the steady song 
Of an indifferent flood, upon whose face 
He saw, unseeing, a tremendous force 
Defy him in his dying. Deep the hum 
Of that dark mottled current moaned despair 
To whomsoever dared desire to soothe 
Discords stupendous, or to curb the strain 
Superb, that nature shouts with all her spheres 
In universal hymnal grandiose. 

But he, sublime in human hope, his soul 
Unsapped by vaporous visions, dragged him on 
Along the ledges. How with his straight blade 
He shaped from the stubborn trunk a laboured skiff 
He scarce recalls — the intermittent wish 
7 



To live had grown so weak — nor how he launched 
The primitive craft, nor how he held his bow 
One with the savage current till the end. . . . 

One night the waters flung him on a shore 

Of primal wildness, not unknown to him. 

Whereon he staggered swooning, but the sun 

Of morning roused him ; he was not to die. 

For he must yet tempt other lives and deaths. 

Half starved and wasted, many a death he missed 

From hidden cliffs or treacherous swamps, and once 

A poisoned arrow found him by a chance 

Another man was saved from. Then at evening. 

Turning aside from a rank mountain trail 

By which he rode a long, long month before 

Leading his men in desperate hazard, now 

He thought to lie again in the deep grass 

And sleep away his fever till the chill 

Should seize him. Half in swoon he staggered on. 

But suddenly about him rustled, waving. 

The ragged shreds of lush banana trees 

Shaking their banners in an unknown cleft 

Upon the high hillside, and he emerged 

Through a draped opening to a hidden hut 

Shapeless and squat and thatched, among the bush 

Of spiked palmettos; here he crawled and fell 

Shivering upon the sill, and then he swooned. . . , 

As when a diver pierces through the warm 
And sunsteeped waters to a silent depth 
Icy and virgin for his sharp delight. 
So, out of alternate trances in the heat. 



Uncertain with half wakenings, weary yet 

At the dull door of death where he had wandered. 

The chill of sunset flowed about his head 

And brought him back to what he knew as life. 

A crooning scarcely audible he heard 

From the deep violet shadows round the place 

Whereon he lay : what unharmonious 

Strange sound it was that curled the waiting air 

The while it writhed about him duskier growing. 

To lure him back to that miasmic dream 

Where he was all but lost? . . . 'O mad . . . O 

wild . . .' 
What words, as of some age-old mother-song. 
Trailed through his stupor, what lost passionate voice. 
Thus scarce articulate ? . . . * O mad . . . O wild . . . 

'O mad . . . O wild . . . 
The dream . . . the dream . . . 
I seem, I seem 
To feel the child ... 

•His eyes ... his eyes . . . 

They open slow 

Upon the glow 

Of saffron skies . . . 

'He died ... he died . . . 
And went to God . . . 
And came from God . . . 
Back to my side . . . 



'The hut is sad . . . 

The hill is wild ... 

Cold is the child . . . 

And I am mad . . . mad . . . mad!' 

He swooned and yet he knew he was alive. 

For after the thick night had lain upon him 

Hour-long, the voice would cease in mutterings. 

The lonely nightmare of those broken words 

Haunting him in his fever. At the dawn 

Wild creatures seemed to tend him where he lay 

On skins he thought he had gathered from the hunt 

And spread upon a heaped palmetto bed. 

Herbs that he knew were pressed upon his brow 

Or bound upon the poison ot his side ; 

He drank the barbarous juices of the land 

Unseeing in his stupor . . . But at last 

His eyes were open to the yellow light 

Piercing like golden knives across the black 

Of silent spiked date-palms that never shook 

In the still heat of a beginning day. 

Out of the gloom of death he seemed to wake 

To a new birth, and heavy purple warmth 

Glowed close and yet so far through a strange square 

That might have been the door 'twixt death and life. 

But as he grew to see he knew at last 

That he was in a hut and lay alive 

Upon a pile of puma skins whose sheen 

Of tawny silver teased his wondering sense 

To know when he had piled them there. At length 

He wearied and he slept again. At noon 

He woke. Beside him crouching from the heat 

lO 



And mumbling inarticulate was a thing 

So old and doubled that the wanderer scarce 

Believed he saw it. Whether it was real 

Or human or a beast he wondered long 

Without a fear, for he was like a child. 

So passive. He recalled the fantasies 

But vaguely, of the shuddering year-long night 

When he was newly born. So, slowly, then 

He knew the creature was a woman-thing ; 

He caught the muttering of her skinny throat; 

Felt on his side the scratchings of her claws 

Touch him the while he granted wonderingly 

The sharp caresses ot her savage care. 

And trusted like the child he felt he was 

Her wolf-like motherhood. . . . 

In the days that passed. 
Days when the doorway showed a golden flame 
Swallowing the earth, he fevered and he sweat 
In weakness, and the wolf-crone tended him. 
Hour-long she hunted while he watched her slide 
Across the corner fumbling with her herbs 
Or tearing at her meat. Her eyes were hid 
In rugged furrows, and her hairy brows 
Were drawn together squinting at the sun ; 
Her stalwart back was bent by many a load 
In long decades of hunting, like a man's; 
Likewise her bony shambling limbs no trace 
Of aught but want or strife could show; — no sign 
Of tiger graces or of woman beauty 
Illumed the brutish bulk so overhung 
With ragged skins and tatters ; horny feet 
II 



Scratched at the ground she ambled on ; the touch 
Of her grey hands was all the wanderer knew 
Of her humanity, while she clutched his side 
With nursing. Queer the image unto him. 
For he remembered luxury and love 
In palaces where he had laid his head 
On lovely laps, a wounded royal charge. 
Though still through that sweet dream relinquishing 
Never the bitter struggle unredeemed. . . . 

Fearless the man grew slowly from the child 
He had been when he woke as from the womb. 
Withered and centuries old, of the wolf- wife. 
Who mothered him with savage thrusts and grips. 
Huddled at night on the cold earthern floor. 
Forgetting with the light all but a joy 
Long-starving at her entrails, grovelling 
With the old fire that fed the loosened seed 
Of a man-child. . . . Her very soul had gone 
With all her womanhood, the female dower. 
Into the dissolute progeny of her loins . . . 
But in the night with savage growlings, she 
Lay licking at the hand that was so weak 
And biting with her gums the finger tips 
Of the faint prince of warriors. God, O God! 
At last how did the pain of passion shred 
The tendons of the brutish woman's heart 
For this supreme bestowal to her want! . . . 

O, all the wasted beauty of him gleamed 
And god-like grew through many tropic dawns 
For her senility, and pierced the blindness 



Of ancient eyes, and when the moonlight rifted 
Under the thatch upon his pearl and ebony — 
The dear wan flesh of all his body wasted — 
The creature gulped a snarl that grew a sob 
And snatched the fors to cover that sweet beauty 
From the cold jealous moon ! The wonderful 
Laxity of his wan sure feet she saw, 
As rare as the white violet and as fair. 
Rising in nervous twining suppleness 
To the tense knee whence sprang the undulations 
Winding the thigh, and in their woven beauty 
The twisting muscles, strong as cypress fibre. 
Pale as the pearl translucence of an orchid 
In tender fleshly texture, felt the woman 
Through her worn eyes; and the luxuriance 
From where the throat began in bluish shadows 
Beneath the beard, the flare of widening whiteness 
Of the cleft breast, the mobile turn of shoulder. 
The straight smooth side as of a veined marble, 
Carven above the loin in a short tunic — 
That loin magnificent! — At its beginning 
Like a slim snow-clad ridge, the apotheosis 
Of the victorious charm of his dear manhood! — 
His wasted force, with not too tender touch 
She gripped and gave to him in brutal tending; 
By sturdy clutch she brought the life blood coursing 
Through his heroic frame. Humble, she gathered 
The primal force thus garnered from the years 
Mounting to five-score of the woman-brute. 

Within her motherhood bloomed as day by day 
He grew to live again in her lean grasp, 
13 



In the remembrance of his former strength 
He waxed, impatient for the renewing deed 
Of the warrior, of the hero, of the man. 
Words of a formless thought came to his mind 
Gleaned from harsh murmurings of her monologue. 
Sung from the eternal woman-song for him 
In his dejection : 

'Though thou shouldest lose 

The tone of thy steel spirit, 

King before me, O my child! 

Though thou shouldest grow 

Ever more wan — 

Though thou shouldest waste 

From hunger and from wounds. 

From fever in the wilds — 

Still in thy beauteous ruin 

Thou shouldest be 

My child again, king among wanderers. 

Thou man of destiny ! 

Go thou to fight again 

soul of my lost heaven! 

1 bore you in my loins once, but you died. 
When you had parted from my jealous flesh. 
Had torn me with your savage ecstasy 

To breathe the dumb air of the speechless world. 
You died because your spirit gasped and fled . . . 
And I could never find it on these hills . . . 
And so I let it go, the free-born soul! . . .' 

It was as if he heard the responsive air 
Sound and resound around his heavy head 
H 



A dream distorted grown from out he past 
Of a wild motherhood and full of lope 
For the great freedom, first, of all her sons. 
Her fellows, her sad country and her race. 
Burning eternally in her, last to die 
The first great instinct, freedom, fed her life. 
Muttering at evening when she crouched alone 
In the dark shadow farthest fi-om the bed. 
Her inarticulate words let free a spark 
From the ashes of her speech, and < liberty' 
'Liberty' was the word he heard, and 'child' 
And 'God' and 'child' again, and 'mad! . . . mad 

mad! . . .' 
Crouching beneath his level in the dawn. 
Breathing above the night and passing out 
To the eternal silence of the stars. 
Until the raving suddenly was still 
Submerged in violent pan tings as her breath 
Yielded to harsh control, or wearmess. 

Some splendid impulse thrilled him to the life 
He once had clothed with splendour, valorous 
Or subtle; rapturous or rich with love. 
He roused from out the toxic swoon his sense 
Had sunk in and he dreamed of all the deeds 
That the world needed mighty men to do. 
Thus, slowly, as a traveller in a desert 
Surviving all the stages of his strife 
With torrid heat and thirst and beasts of prey. 
The wanderer came again unto his own. 
His inner paradise of splendid ardour. 
Great wondering had led him where he was 

15 



To make the wild men wrangle, stab and die; 
To know the real crude impulse; to subdue 
Such creatures for his own wise masculine ends 
That he might bend to order all the race. . . , 
Fragments of his large hope came in swift moods 
Flashing like fire with exquisite sharp pain 
Into a languid day of wakening. 
Roused by his hope in the keen hours of dawn 
He saw nor that which nursed him, nor the hut 
That housed them both as fellow brutes; he saw. 
Isolate, at war in soul against 
The later sordid days, oppression, laws. 
His own ghost rise and ride the wastes alone. 
Gathering one by one the shadow-shapes 
From a disordered country. There a germ 
Of fortune surely sown by him would grow 
Into a regal triumph in the years 
Of his new knighthood; so he was himself 
But glorified by the sharp certainty 
Of new self knowledge. She, the stark thing, crouched 
With gleamless eyes within the shade, like dead. 
And as he grew to be a man again 
The flame of motherhood within the hag. 
Dwindling thus, was hidden more and more. 
Until she crawled about among the shadows 
Absenting her the more from day to day 
And sleeping at the threshold in the night. 
So fled the life from her to him, so grew 
The spark from her fierce seasons through his hours 
Of convalescence. Woe unto the woman 
When he, the warrior, woke to his desire! 
Could the free flowing tears but solace her 
i6 



She were to envy! But the hardening 

Of her rich-fibred years had closed upon 

A heart of pain, scarce pulsing in a prison 

More cruel than the mad-house ! Mouthing, mumbling 

He heard her bid him go, and 'liberty' — 

'Liberty' was his warrant. 

Thus he rose 
And took new strength against the new oppression. 
He fought for liberty against the old 
Blind feebleness ; he fought for chivalry 
And peace ; for truth and for simplicity ; 
For reason, equal justice, and for right 
In law and love. . . . 

But when a hunger 
To mingle with his kin obscured his triumph. 
As if some soft mist overspread the scene 
Of summer glory; and he yearned to see 
The home ancestral he was born to, then 
On the far voyage over Ultramar 
The wanderer departs. He will not live 
A slave to any race! Unlimited 
His wandering, for his brothers are the world! 



17 



IV 

Where is our kingdom, love ? 
That old sweet realm 
Ot faded airs, above 
Whose florid wreaths the elm 
Waves flowery branches. 
And the garnished god 
Smiles amid garlands? 

Or come you from the sea 
That laps a town 
Softly, incessantly. 
Where palaces look down 
Upon the turnings. 
And tidal ways 
Surge in the twilight ? 

Where would you take me, love? 

Into the South 

Of the orange grove 

Where a tropic drouth 

Drenches in purple 

The royal land. 

Languorous, alluring? 

O let our empire rise 
Out of the dark 
Of myriad midnight skies 
Starred with the mark 
Of an eternal, 
A world-long love. 
White in the ages! 
i8 



V 

Thou hast taken the light from my eyes 

And it gleams on thy sword; 
Thou hast taken the rose from my cheek 

And it lies on thy breast; 
Thou hast taken my word and the rest. 

Thou wilt thrust at thy intimate foe 

The arm that embraced; 
Thou wilt drink with the mouth I have kissed 

The blood with the dust 
In thy taste for the fray and thy lust. 

My breast thou hast bared for thy head 

Lies pale in the field ; 
My mouth thou hast sought in the dark 

Is the wound of thy side ; 
My joy is the yield of thy pride. 

I have sent out my soul in the fire 

Of the night of the fray ; 
I have opened the deeps of my heart 

To thy hot thirsting breath, 
I would stay in thy spirit in death. 



19 



VI 



Lord of the life that welters through the ways 
Paling my sides and purpling all my veins; 
Sweet lord of all my passions and my pains. 

My precious tears, my praise. 

My nights, my lonely days. 

Within me flows thy fire 
Through the fine channels trembling to thy thrill. 
Answering thy wild delight to wilder sob 
So all the earth and all the heavens throb 

Through my desire to still 

The ardour of thy will. 

Thy sovereign desire. 

Lord of the little life that heareth not. 
Bound in the crimson bud, what restless seas 
Or evening tempests sing, or the slight breeze 

Sighs to the new begot 

Of a mysterious lot. 

Within me flows thy fire; 
Thine is the life that lights the violet gloom 
Hidden in me for my consuming dole. 
Flushing my cheek, devouring my white soul. 

For thee my myrtles bloom. 

Flowers of the tragic womb. 

Sweet lord of my desire! 



VII 

The body is not, love, save for the soul; 

Dumb is the flesh and dead. 
My essence is elusive as the scroll 

Woven and formed and fled 
When the blue waves of forest smoke unroll 

Their tendrils overhead. 

I have grown sacred, love, because of you. 

Because of these blest hours 5 
And wine is as my mouth, and honey-dew 

My tears, and many flowers 
My flesh, and all my veins the heaven's blue,- 

The chrism of love is ours. 



VIII 

Take my wan feet within your liands 

And let them feel 

The tears of one who goes not to return. 

The heavy tears of loneliness in lonely lands. 

Would you conceal 

The winds ? Hamper the floods ? 

Forbid the fires that burn? 

Deny great moods 

Within the grandeur of those heights 

Where you will stand alone? 

The isolate hills where you will rove ? 

The strange still nights 

When the seas moan 

With the eternal voice ot our long woe? 

My love, my love! 

Listen, I bid you go 

Into the royal richness of those wilds 

Wilder than our wild love. 

More royal than my soul. 

Richer than me! 

My love is free! 

The reaches of the future are yours and mine, 

Great love that seemest to hold my soul! 

Palely the flowers 

Of my cool flesh are lying 

Under your hand. 

The strange, passionate orchid, the rose-golden wine 

Of our rare love 

Have changed; — 



The dying 

And the immortal life are ours 

Out of the essence of their mingled whole. 

My love, my love! 

Mine were you, mine, before 

The thunder and the thrill 

From the far, shaken shore 

Thrust us together in one life, until 

The hision was one soul. 

Ours the wide earth 

Although you be estranged 

From my unconsecrate flesh, 

O earthly one! 

My soul sleeps in your fibre, love! 

The double beauty of us in the mesh 

Of fate has led us on 

To one supremest birth. 

Your soul in me. 

Henceforth, my love, my love. 

Free are you, free! 

O Solitudes, 

Ye shall He long upon his soul. 
In poignant nights of rapture. 
In strange spaces 
Of wonder where his goal 
May lead him unaware 
Through the vastness of the spheres. 
Through uncomprehending places. 
Through ambushed days and nights of capture ! 
He shall roam, he shall dare 
Without the whims, the fears 
23 



Of a small fate 

To bind him. 

What tragic kisses tremble through the dark! 

What hushed enthralling 

Of soul by soul! 

O some pristine, imperial state 

Shall find him! 

The planet's reel, the orbed roll 

Of suns shall crown him! 

The vacuum of space is calling 

My king from me! So late. 

So near the dawn. 

So far from me. 

His spirit broods. 

Shivers, awakes, is gone 

To the vast kingdom of his moods. 

Yet in the glory of those other years. 
The stern strong years of power. 
Out of the past 

Of our two mingled souls shall flame the flower. 
The white illimitable treasure 
Of the sweet tears. 
Of the old hungering pleasure. 
And the immortal peace 
Of our relinquished love. 
At last, at last, 
O, this of me shall cease. 
My hands that love you and my timid feet 
You help and hold! 
My eyes you love. 
My fruitfulness you enfold! 
24 



Yet sweet, O sweet 
Shall sing the fire. 
The flower caress. 
The soul of us aspire 
And bless 
All that has been. 
All that shall be 
Of us until eternity 
Is sphered within 
Our everlasting love! 



25 



IX 



O WHEN the time shall come that you depart 
Let not our world of love be dyed in fears. 
Nor yield that any bitter forecast sears 
Our passionate yearnings ; let us play no part 
Before the impassive heaven with childish art ; 
Let us not limit love to little years 
Of lawless laughter, nor with lover's tears 
Deny the future, lover of my heart ! 
But leave me as a sovereign, O my king. 
The crowned queen of our supreme domain. 
That you may ride in splendour to your goal 
While all the mighty centuries stand and sing 
Of war and love, of triumph and of pain. 
And our great joy, O lover of my soul ! 



26 



Come to me, little one, are you afraid? 
See how the storm blows keen on the sea. 
Straining and streaming, unfearing, unreckoning. 
See the white sailing ships tossing and beckoning. 
Hear the seas shouting and calling to me ; 
Come to me, little one, warrior maid! 

Little one, child heart, have you not said. 
Soft in the soul of the long summer night. 
Words of the warrior whispering the best in me? 
Ah, now your lover must follow his destiny. 
Have you not fired all his soul to the fight? 
Little one, always my warrior maid! 

Child of my heyday, soul of my blade. 

Slim as my sword and as fiery and free. 

See how the storm skies are thundering, darkening. 

Loud is the song of the wind we are harkening. 

Child, O my little one, whisper to me, 

Wish me good wandering, warrior maid! 



27 



XI 

The old sad destiny I share with her 

Whose simple soul 
Is weeping unaware within its sleep ; 

For me no splendid goal 
Conceals the tomb that all the ages keep 

For fame's great freeholder. 

I to forever love and you to do 

The glorious deed. 
You to forever live and I to die, — 

I, with the woman's need 
To go on loving all a lifetime through 

While you can pass love by! 



28 



XII 

O LEAVE the shore 
Without a tear — 
The wide seas roar. 
The heavens cry — 
Without a fear. 
Without a sigh. 
For evermore, 
O evermore 
Your love am I! 



29 



II 



THE ROOM 

Ghost of the shelter of a wandering soul. 
Sweet room — O shadowed room! 

Substance of life is pushing through the gloom. 
Unending, never whole. 

To one the room has been an ambushed lair ; 

To one a primal cave 
Fierce with the face of death ; to one a grave 

After life-long despair. 

For him who blasphemes love no heaven glows 

Inside the holy shade. 
Out shall he hurry when the test is made. 

Bereft of wine and rose ! 

Large influences hover in those walls. 

Uninjured by the mean; 
Free of the sordid, clear of the unclean 

A subtle blessing falls. 

What persons met me, loved me, held me there? 

How should the past invite 
That I, a stranger, for a day or night 

Enjoyed the royal fare? 

A thousand lovers in the shadows lure; 

A thousand breathing lips 
Brush mine ; the long day unimagined slips. 

Rounded by the obscure. 

33 



The pain that has been here is passion now. 

Crushed in the silent bond 
Between us, heritants of the dim beyond. 

Last lovers, I and thou! 



34 



THE POOL 

I AM a still pool in the shadow. 
Deep hidden in twilight. 
Dark as night in the day. 
Strong as sunshine in the shadow. 

The still pool knows no dawn. 
Thou hast seen but the summer 
When efflorescent, fringed, covered. 
The marges hide the dawn. 

Marges of the soul, — beauty! 
But all below — mvstery! 
Wait, no straggler is certain, 
O casual loiterer, of this beauty. 

He that sings sadly. 

Making melancholy love to the moonrise. 
May not see me under the marges 
Shadowed silently, sadly. 

He that loveth the world. 
Wide weave his footsteps! 
The still pool echoes never, never 
The clang of the peaceless world. 

The summer hideth the marge 
In garish glory of gold. 
In green and ruddy leafage. 
With yellow of bracken, hideth, 
35 



Burning to blood-red in autumn. 
Piling with fawn-color. 
Tawny-leaved, rusty, rustling. 
Ragged, — the marge in autumn. 

Bare me to winter! Ah, Love, 
Thou shiverest. Whom love knows not 
Lieth silent before him. 
Thus I forever. Love. 

I, unknown, unaware, unwanted. 
Still, still, the frozen pool. 
Icy-pierced, passive. 
Bound in the season, unwanted. 

Wait ! Shall there be springtime. Love ? 

A thousand mirrored glints 

Wake in my surface 

All of beauty and first love. 

Green, like the garment of earth. 
Dark, like the deep of eyes. 
White, like remembered snow. 
Fantastic, fascinating, under the earth 

The pool glimmers. Purple, 
Bronze ; royal, eternal ; 
Rose as the dawn, and yet 
Gleam from it pearl and pale purple. 

Silvered tints drift on the pool. 
O mystery, — mysteries 
36 



Thou love shalt hunger toward, 
Shalt long for, in the pool. 

Long as a life, longer. 

The low waters. 

Under the ledges, silent, still. 

Sleep, a lifetime of seasons, longer. 

Give up thy secrets, winter! 
Whispering or crooning, 
Breathless or sobbing. 
Wild winds in the hush of winter. 

The wellsprings wander. 
Weltering, welling, alive; 
All earth is theirs and life. 
Thou loiterer, thou wanderer! 



37 



THE BED 

The permanent repose of centuries 

Broods in the purple folds. 
There birth, seeming to mock the obsequies 

Of yesterday, unfolds. 
Sobbing, another future to its woe; 

Or the sweet young await. 
Sleeping, a destiny; or later, lo. 

Longing, an undreamed fate. 

The splendours of the bed deluge the earth. 

He who is loved or dead. 
And she who loves or dies; despair or birth. 

All there are bred; 
All given, taken ; grief and peace there keep 

The panther and the dove; 
All found or fled ; and evanescent sleep 

Purple with night; and love. 

Persistent with theatrals throngs the host 

In crimson pomp and gold; 
The dim blue phantoms there; the misty ghost 

When the new mocks the old; 
When the rose-melting wraiths arise, adorn 

The common human bower; 
When flesh turns unto flesh ; when love is born 

At the supernal hour. 

Wild as the winds of heaven the wild heart 
Doth tremble to resolve 

38 



The rtpnire lurkinff ihwe; to phick tptn 

ve 
The jch 

Th" , ' to the touch 

Thou prcaage ot the tocnt)' 



PRELUDE 

I 

This night of sighing winds and shaking boughs 
I come to you, my heart's wild mate, I come! 
Feel you the tempting of the leafy house. 

Our forest home ? 
Feel you the secret silence as we rove. 
Closing around us ever where we stray ? 
Now at the edges of a curtained grove. 

And now away 
Into the gleaming fields, by shadowy copse. 
Wherever lead your lingering, languid feet 
In promise to my long-enbosomed hopes 

I follow, sweet. 
The half moon scarce gives light to show how still 
Lies now the sunken valley sleeping dim 
Below our pathway on the silvery hill. 

Beyond whose rim 
Our odorous forest reaches forth his arms 
To help his wildlings wander on their way. 
The mountain winds give ever new alarms 

In gusty play. 
But lending to the loneness of the spot 
Where sway the sheltering branches now above 
Your lifted face that kisses frighten not — 

You are my love! 
Sink we into the fragrant wild-wood deeps! 
Here hang the boughs above the wooing bed 
Where dusk invites and languorous stillness sleeps 

About your head. 
40 



O, yield unto the urging of the gloom! 

I feel your breast give way beneath my breast! 

Let this be death! This be our lasting doom. 

This is love's best! 
Is it a swoon, delirious with dream 
Of eyes that hold the darkness of the night, 
Upreaching arms wherein my senses seem 

Faint with delight? 



41 



II 



see! The gusts have blown the crumpled cloud 
Away from where the moon is moving slow 

Across the troubled sky — 
See! All the trees bend low before the loud 
Unstable rage of the rude blasts that blow. 

Shunning us where we lie! 

Hold me more close within those quiet hands; 

1 hear the night-birds moan, I fear the dark; 

Yes, even love I fear. 
What omen is this that my sense withstands ? 
What haunts me with a dread of heaven's mark 

Set on me in the year? 

At last night blots out all our earth, O love! 
Thickly the hollow where we lie is darkened; 

Through trances come your words 
Murmuring faintly, mingled from above 
With voice of winds whose presage I have harkened. 

Warned by the wise night-birds. 



42 



Ill 



Far in the eastern sky, above 
The level of the mist across the vale. 
Our last night's moon doth wane and pale. 

But vou sleep on, my love. 

Open, dear one, those love-sealed eyes. 
And watch with me the growing of the day. 
Until our night shall pass away. 

Until the sun shall rise. 

Strange was this twofold joy, wherein 
We held the hurrying night between our hearts! 
Now morning into heaven starts. 

And daylight doth begin. 



43 



BIRTH 

And thou wast born! 
Thou grewest in breathless gloom 
Within the enfolding tenure of the womb; 

Thou wast enclosed, embraced 
Within the jealous sheath where thou wast placed 
By love; but love hath called thee forth from me. 

That thou at last breathe free. 
And open thy sweet eyes unto the morn. 

I dream of thee! 
With first weak steps I come to lean above 
And fold my weakling to my heart of love. 

Wherever doth increase 
A joy in throbs like unto pain. 

I yearn for thee to ease 
The rapture, as when thy soft mouth has pressed 
The very life of nurture, pearl-drops without stain 

From my breast! 
Thou art the glorious fruitage of my love. 
The air of myriad springtimes stirred thy soul. 
Bred life in thee ; 
Nourished wast thou from above. 
By the warm sky wast perfect made and whole. 

Fostered in nature's liberality. 
I loved thee for my love's sake when thou wast not thou, 
Hadst naught, nor form, nor sense. 
But from the inmost seed 
Of a close-mingled rapture wast to grow 
Through nameless shapes of life to evidence 
A slow perfection's need. 



44 



Ill 



THE PASSION 

I WAS at the heaven of all the heavens. 
Thrills of star-old radiance poured to meet me, 
Let me reach the sight of supernal glory 
Near the eternal. 

Smote my eyes the calm of the blinding heaven. 
Awful rapture searing my soul to whiteness 
Sang above the doom of the silent pathway 
Glooming below me. 

Sullen arms of darkness have crept around me. 
Mingling voices mutter and rise and hinder : 
'Would ye blot the heaven with mortal longing? 
Sob at this portal? 

'Sit by some slow infinite sea of yearning. 
Human heart, for never desire shall enter 
Clothed with pain, unsated, unloved, unhoping,- 
You of the shadows ! ' 

I have seen the heaven of all the heavens 
Flaming high, forbidden to me astounded. 
While I mourn reserved and immortal spaces, 
I, undeserving. 

Blessed pain! O blessed be thou forever! 
Never mine without thee the grief of loving. 
Never throbbing heart impassioned with sorrow. 
Never the Passion! 
47 



SAPPHICS 

Bold the heart that burns with the acrid essence 
Out of hearts distraught from the simple loving 
Felt in sad lone wilds by the simple-hearted 
Folk of the fen-side, 

Wouldst thou cherish love ever more forever. 
Clinging, sighing, singing and crying mutely? 
Feel the change, the tremor, the swerve, the triumph. 
All for a rapture? 

Wouldst thou bring to birth from the core of blooming ? 
Dead shall be the child of thy arid passion. 
Cold the subtle bud shall await the embalming 
Of thy forgetting! 

Wouldst thou conquer aught of the strange, sweet future ? 
Thou shalt wake and wander alone in sorrow. 
Know the olden joy and the olden wonder 
Under the tempest! 



48 



C. B. 

All the sweet long day I am mad with fever. 
Burns mv heart in silence for day to leave her. 
Dusk to bring her, night to bestow her ever 
Close in my keeping. 

Through the warm blue, thinly a moonlet creepeth 
Toward the star ot evening where pale she sleepeth ; 
Weep not, sweet! Ah, sweet, doth she dream she 
weepeth ? 

Cometh she never! 



49 



KALAMAZOO 

Sprung from streams the Indian knew before us, 
I have seen the Kalamazoo's beginning 
In the deeps of Michigan's towering forests. 
Starred with his pathways. 

Through the moving on of your flood, O river. 
Glows submerged the emerald of your gardens; 
From the wilds your sources shall swell enchanted. 
Cold and untainted. 

Wave the fat green arms of your water witches. 
Palely silvered ; stirring the bronze of grasses 
Seem to writhe a myriad of mingling serpents. 
Bloodless and nerveless. 

Brushed and tied and drenched the metallic tresses 
Swaying as from the foreheads of dead mermaidens 
Pillowed sombre in plushes of mossy weaving, 
Willessly waving. 

O, the creeping song of your shores at nightfall! 
Unforgot though moveth your heavy current 
Mighty through the twilight and into the darkness. 
Sounding of mystery. 



50 



GHAZELS 

I 

There is a country where the cactus grows 
In tough persistence, but the sweetest rose 

Is not so rich as that fringed crimson bloom. 
Unharmed though sunheat burns, though stormwind 
blows. 

There barren hills swell upward to the sun 
Above lagunes whose shallow waters run 

Down from slow-rising, unmarked summits, where 
The dry grass turns from green to dullest dun. 

But at the edges of the pool, unseen. 

The grass roots touch the moisture, reach the green. 

And drink in purest color, neither grey. 
Nor silver-green, nor blue, but half between. 

Beyond there lies a luxury of leaves, 
Lucent or ashen grev, — one flower receives 

Gold from the sun, or there are rosy flowers 
Or copper-red or white ; this bloom retrieves 

The sterile hill from bleakness, and the sky. 
Sleeping and blue, from loneliness ; there fly, 

Singing, the birds, sweet as in other climes; 
Or after sunset, there the swamp-hens cry. 



51 



II 



Those four pale petals point to north and south 

And east and west, whence sweeps the wind ; the 

growth 
Of curling prairie grass clings to the ground. 
As thickly, softly woven as a cloth 
Of tender green, within whose woof that pink. 
Four-leaved flower like a rare threadknot doth 
Shine out and show the great earth's guiding points. 
Its crimson-branching veins and stem are both 
Rich with the blood of Nature, and its breath 
Sends out her very sweetness to the drouth. 



52 



IV 



FLOS FLORUM 

The morning sleepeth pure 

And pale, intact, entire, 

Unwakened to the lure 

Of a long-hushed desire. 

(O hush, thou smouldering heart of fire!) 

The cold, closed joy of bloom 

Yet unborn of the mire, 

Mouldeth within the gloom 

A floweret of desire. 

(Grow to thy fulness, flower of fire !) 

Burn, ether, to the heart 
Of rose and of sapphire. 
For flame shall form a part 
Of my bright flower of fire. 
(For thus ariseth thy desire.) 

Thy flame shall be as seven 

When thou at last aspire 

Into the fire of heaven 

To follow my desire. 

(Thou folded flame, thou flower of fire.) 

Thou shalt be mine, thou flower. 

For thou wert my desire 

Before thy opening hour. 

Thou flower, thou flower of fire! 

(Bloom thou for me, for my desire!) 



55 



This thou shalt surely do 

When thou shalt raise thy spire 

From the sweet earth unto 

The heaven of my desire! 

(Mine art thou always, flower of fire!) 

O let the hour be long 
Of thy fire-souled empire. 
Mine is the hour and thine. 
Thou flower, thou flower of fire! 
(Thou flower, my flower of fire!) 



56 



SONGS 

Fly awav, wind of the desert sands ; 

' T is barren there ; 
Carrv the breath 1 give unto your care 

To other lands. 

Find him, dear wind, wherever he may be. 

The while you blow ; 
His dwelling-places you may never know. 

Touch him for me. 



I WILL go with you over seas where the sun rises. 
Or lingers your spirit near, so shall we turn 
Into strange swarms of men, O love! 
Hasten and find me! 

Where all things are human, I will go with you. 
Or wanders your spirit far, so shall we flee 
Forever to lonely plains, O love. 
Hasten and find me! 



57 



AUTUMN HEART 

Likening my love to a reluctant flame — 
Thus flickers slow the life in Autumn's heart. 
Thus pallid look the leaves in purple frame 
Of Autumn's near, cool heaven. Pale is the part 
Love plays in dreams of all the frail old bliss. 
Through days it seems life glowed but as the fire 
Behind the ruddy leaves that bright rays kiss. 
Or as the sun in amber holds empire. 

Stiller than sleep left languorous by love. 
Lies, in the grove, like a mosaic floor, 
A marbled pool, rich-inlaid from above 
By the bright leaves, lost out of Autumn's store. 
And set across the darkling water's brim. 
How they were borne by winds in fierce disport, 
A sweep of crimson clouds, from forest rim. 
Or sped as bright-dyed sailboats into port. 
No mortal knows; or whether, pale and slow. 
They settled, drifting, as the first soft flakes 
Of snow, blown in a sunset's yellow glow, 
I cannot tell. Where yonder woodland makes 
A clustering, gorgeous crown above the hill 
The trees seem like huge blossoms, so they blush. 
Yet know I that their bloom shall not fulfil 
The springtime sign of summer's flaunt and flush. 

Come, Soul of my Beloved, walk with me! 
The land is strange and wild in Autumn's sway; 
Down through the pensive valley lies the way. 
By yellowing, whispering willows overhung, 
58 



And on the ledge stands many a rugged tree, 
In rusty-red leaves clad, or russet, flung 
Sombre on crimson, carmine, scarlet hues. 
Yet tainted sad with Autumn's dying breath. 
Rising in purple mist, a veil of death 
To garb the glory of the passing hour. 
To sanctitv all lost to Nature's use 
As it were shrouded pale by beauty's power. 

Ascend with me, thou Soul, the gentle hill 
Leading aside past hedge and garden-close. 
To the grey misty orchard, silvery-sweet. 
Where love seems flitting through the branches still. 
And ever seems to wander with light feet 
On the pale grass and through the orchard rows. 

linger near the ghostly grove awhile. 
Spirit of my far love! Or let us stray 
Again, and catch the glimpse of sinuous slopes 
Lying about the marsh beyond the stile 

Where swam the lilies when the year was warm. 
In days of love and light and summer hopes. 

By fields of winter wheat, green 'neath the grey 
Of solemn sky, and past the homely farm, 

1 lead thee, love, in spirit. Look ! the way 
Turns and is lost, over the sharp hillside. 
But far we wander up, and on the verge 
Of the blunt cliiF resounds a lonely roar — 
The hollow tones of pines swell and subside. 
O still and sad, my heart, harken the dirge 
Low wailing now and with a rising blast, 

59 



The organ-note of sorrow, evermore 
Aloof and lofty, solitary, vast. 

Alas, it seems I hear woe's voice afar 
Like the slow pines ; and grief doth so oppress 
As the close heaven, leaning overhead; 
But if I know love's touch and love's caress. 
What love hath given, sorrow may not mar! — 
I am alone! — Where is thy spirit fled? 



60 



OBLIVION 

Bathed in the dusk depths of thine eyes. 
My bare soul shivers in the stream 
Of an insatiable surprise 
Wherein I wonder, waken, dream. 

Drenched in the shadow of thy gaze 
Mysterious broodiixg on the deep 
Splendour of thy inner days. 
My hidden longings stir from sleep. 

Drowned in the dark pool of thy look 
Where wondrous twilights gleam and cease 
As on the heart of some slow brook, 
Would that I lay in timeless peace! 



6i 



VENIT REX 

Through thy rich cloak of fleshly calm. 
From thine eyes' soul, in the darkness thereof. 
Germ of all joy, I feel thee! 

White as the antique fields of space 
Thy wondrous breast ; fine as red gold 
From the ageless sun, thy living crown! 
In the endless spring of everlasting dreams. 
Fair frame of manhood, I wait thee! 

Ages strove to give thee strength. 
Fickle seasons merged for thee 
Into the marvel of thy heart. 
Slow months laboured toward thy life. 
Wonder of love, I hail thee! 

Tenderness rules the timeless soul 
Caught in the heaven of thy depths. 
Charm as of first mute loving clothes 
Thy ripened days, O fiiture man of men! 
A woman worships thee! 



62 



THE POET 

(j4t Eighteen J 



Sweet as a saintly psalm 
He sings, and unaware. 
The spirit ponders calm 
Through song and prayer. 



(At Tiventy-fourJ 

Playeth the young sultan, arrogant. 
Humoured bv easy girls he calls his slaves. 
Turbans and scimitars and scarves and glaives. 
Treasured and gemmed, sleep 'mong his carpets. 



(Ai Thirty) 

Hath lived in word and war and love. 
He is a man all men above. 
He is a friend, a comrade, peer 
Of poet, soldier, king, or seer. 



(And ivhen his dark mane shakes in the sloiv sea air, she, from a 

groove of strange, stunted cedars, sings, silently 

in her heart to the poet :) 

The prisoned thought mv soul would free 

He knoweth not ; 
He heareth nothing but the sea. 

And hath forgot 
The shore ; ignoreth what the deeps have said to me. 
63 



O poet, died unheard the note 

Of my dumb song? 
Through fruitless air my kisses smote 

(Alas, how long!) 
Across the gleam of sea-light 'round your mellow throat. 

The turquoise girdle binds a flame, 

lion of men! 

A queen in pride, a slave in shame, 

1 tremble when 

You crouch in vision near me, powerful, untame. 

Pillows are heaped here by the sand; 

sultan, kneel! 
Suing before me as I stand; 

1 fain would feel 

My heavy girdle loosen 'neath your languid hand. 

Under the cedars' heavy shade 

Our empty tent 
Holds the sweet air that day-long played. 

Before you went. 
About us, and I love and I am not afraid. 

This shore will never be the old 

Indifferent sand ; 
Though he were sad, though he were cold. 

The autumn land 
Were ours, — the cedars and the laurel's rusty gold. 

My gems lie blue as tropic seas 
Amid the grass 
64 



A-tremhle tor the Southwest breeze 

To breathe and pass. 
And turn his white prow landward to our cedar trees. 

The tired tides wash the sandy floor 

Beneath my feet. 
I would be here forever more. 

For it is sweet 
To watch the lingering wave and dream upon the shore. 

The afterglow is mine alone. 

I felt a vow 
In the pale light that shone 

About your brow; 
The kingly dream was mine and is, — I dream it now. 

Take me in memory as then, 

O my slow king! 
For you are more than other men 

To love and sing, — 
More than the lover's love or than the poet's ken. 



65 



LOVE OF THE NIGHT 

The little saint is in his niche. 
The children of the earth asleep. 
I love the wide free night time, which 
My human hovering god doth keep. 

The fountain is gone dry, the park 
Is bare of its autumnal bloom. 
The brown leaves whisper in the dark 
Above the brief, bright summer's tomb. 

I roam and linger in the free. 

The friendly gusts of autumn night, 

I call my lover-god, and he 

Doth answer from a wind-swept height. 

I wander wingless over space 

Where sons watch and wild winds roll. 

He veils the ardour of his face. 

He penetrates my sacred soul. 



66 



AT LAST 

After the strange time we know as life. 
Those long hours that were numb. 
Those rushing days of strife, 
Those years when we were dumb, — 

After those binding seasons of our frost. 
The wasted decades spent 
In labour blind and lost 
When grief did not relent, — 

After the time when hope took shadowy form 
Under that earthly cloud 
That covereth as a storm — 
Fearing to pray aloud, — 

Mv soul! At last the wonderment is gone. 
Open your eyes and see! 
At last, the barriers down. 
Fare forth, for you are free! 



67 



ELEANOR 

So late I came unto thy tomb. 
The gates were barred, the night was soft. 
And through the dark and in the gloom 
I saw the cypresses aloft. 

I knew thy lovely little head 
Lay quietly within at rest. 
Forever free, forever dead — 
But, ah! the heart within my breast! 



68 



RESURRECTION 

Set up the god again with crown and wreath. 
The pedestal, camelia-hung, restore. 
Let the love have its olden way beneath 
Him that I did adore. 

O he was fair and luminous of old! 
For pearl and sunrise gleamed about his form. 
But long he lay sunk in the stolid mould 
After the fiery storm. 

No pageantry shall wind about his base 
With blossomed fruit and spiral of perfume. 
Altars oi awesome sacrifice no place 
In this love shall assume. 

He glows more softly from the endless years 
When he was tombed away from slavish rite. 
His cheeks are mellowed by a lover's tears. 
His eyes have lost their light. 

Set up the fallen god I had fain feared, 
For in him rises life from out the clod. 
And earthy gold his high soul has endeared, — 
I love the fallen god! 



69 



ABJURATION 

My heart has been asleep ; 
I live for you. 
For you I think and weep. 
If you but knew. 

For you I have been strong. 
And I am weak ; 
The day and night are long, 
I may not speak. 

My unripe virgin days 
Would bloom at last. 
If I but knew the ways 
Your love has passed. 

The child is yours that lies 
Within his bed. 
But I, if I were wise, 
I should be dead. 

And what have I to give 
That you have not? 
For what, then, shall I live. 
By you forgot? 

Who loved you to the full 
That my love lay 
By you, unmercifiil! 
Thus cast away? 
70 



Forgive me if I cease 
To love you now ; 
Forgive my lonely peace, 
My broken vow. 

If others love you, dear, 
I shall not pine. 
Yours he all love and cheer. 
You are not mine! 



71 



THE TWO WAYS 

What matter be it rain or shining weather? 
An ardent day flows cooled by small refusings — 
The silence folding lonely little musings — 
The music that we might have heard together — 
A track of thought from heart to heart mistaken — 
These are a love-dream shaken. 

Our paths apart; one dull, and one is lonely. 
Now high, now striking low into abysses. 
Leading its downward way past what sad kisses. 
What union for a passing instant only! — 
One wanders on its way in peace and mildness. 
One through a pristine wildness. 

O for the music we shall hear together 
When two ways merge in one! When unrefusing 
The silence throbs to song! What then of choosing 
Whether it shall be rain or shining weather! 
In that strange day the hurricane shall hold us. 
The blast of love enfold us ! 



72 



SECOND WINTER 

The soft snow lies above the green of spring, 
It dings to every shrub and budding thing ; 
Among the blossoms on the apple-tree. 
Hang whiter blooms of winter's garlanding. 

Along the avenue the elm boughs sway 
In gracious whitened spravs above the way; 
Afar through balmy moisture-weighted air. 
Upon the mountain-side the pines are grey. 

Pale winter's dying hand reached forth to fling 
Among the sun-wooed grass a lingering 
Handful of death-like flowerets, soft and white 
And cold, upon the glowing life of spring. 

And winter's hand has laid a gleaming bed 

Ot filmy white, where love-sweet spring has spread 

The feathery fern for me and for my love 

To lie upon, and there my love lies dead. 

And heavy overlying all the gloom 

Of evergreen, a burden white as foam 

Swings like the sea's slow billows, snowy-crowned. 

Changeful and fitting emblem for his tomb. 



73 



THE NORTH 

O Shadows from the South! 
One time ye bade me sing; 
Love's promise did ye bring 
In summer's drouth. 

Still the South changeth not ; 
Roses her poets hold 
Where the world doth enfold 
A garden spot. 

Yet far I see, and through 
The darkling Northern sky 
Great shades arise and fly 

Where storm clouds brew. 

There is the spirit's goal! 

melt not into dream 
Where lower joy doth seem 

To bind the soul! 

Away with puny rhyme. 
With madrigal and round! 

1 hear no more the sound 

Of cymbal's chime. 

Soar far where the keen blast 
Of Northern longing smites, 
Leave off thy earthly rites. 
Forget thy past! 
74 



O thence large spirits come! 
My soul! They call not 'love'! 
They love not, for they rove ; 
High is their home! 

Praise the great Northern ghosts! 
Myriads have come and gone ; 
Like giants move they on 
In mighty hosts! 



75 



IN CHURCH 

He was a god as he stood there 

In the violet light of the house of the Lord. 

He was a god with plenty to spare 

Of life and sweetness and beauty stored 

With food for the senses, abundant, rare. 

The faintest chant of the faint, sweet choir 

Was but a tale of his beauty told 

In tender words; the trembling fire 

Of the organ note, and the deep notes rolled 

From the organ's bass, were as his lyre 

Singing his soul and its wondrous power. 
Chanting his heart in accents dim ; 
From the rich-stained glory of saint and flower 
Fell a light that seemed to shine for him 
With the royal worship of the hour. 

But I was a mortal inspired by the god 
With immortal love, unwinged, unsonged; 
A woman of earth, a mere earth-clod, 
I looked with worship, and looking, longed 
In the church whose aisles he trod. 



76 



ODE TO THE MOUNTAINS 

I 

The dreaming mountains lie athwart the plain 
In plenitude of pride and distant calm ; 

Their grandeur is a psalm 
Ot vaster harmonies than human tongue 
Creates to voice its pain — 
A lonely anthem from their inmost caverns sprung. 

II 

Yet far within that lofty wooded height 

Are sweet and sacred haunts my soul may see. 

Unknown, forever free 
From profanation of the blinded crowd 
That struggles in the night 
Below the towering summit's earthward drooping cloud. 

Ill 

O solitary caves, O secret ways! 

I yearn toward your passionate repose ; 

You know not of our woes. 
Unfriend our discord, stand aloof from strife 
Wherein the pent soul stays 
In mute endurance of this troubled earthlv life. 



IV 



I love the silvery stir of your high groves; 
The sighing of your pines unto my ear 
11 



Is like the near 
Fond whisper of a friend, dear gift of earth. 
And rarest of the loves 
That from the spirit's throes have had a glorious birth. 

V 

I see the pale still moonlight over all; 

The group of thickening trees about your steeps 

Mysteriously sleeps 
In shadow fit for love's secure retreat; 
Dark as a funeral pall 
It lies in heavy silence, beckoning and sweet. 

VI 

O let me dream within the holy shade 

Of those unquestioning hills, O let my voice 

Triumphally rejoice 
In that great hymn pervading your still air; 
O may my song be made 
A paean of the thrall that love holds everywhere! 

VII 

And let me dream the love of friend to friend! 
Your rocks do not more steadfast strength bespeak ; 

The pale and silvery peak 
Does not more pure and free from earth arise 
Ever to meet and blend 
And cleave with calm outline the changeful evening 
skies. 

78 



VIII 

The day is wan when friendship is not there, 
When void of living idols is the heart ; 

Then stand ye not apart. 
But in vour beauteous majesty impose 
The heights that are so fair 
In the eternal consolation nature knows. 



IX 

Cold as the crusted snow upon vour slopes 
That throws afar its radiant prism lights 

To live lone days and nights 
When the heart dreams of long awaited love ; 
To foster fading hopes. 
And watch the everlasting mountains gleam above. 



X 

I have not always looked on those cold hills 
And in their majesty found hope of peace. 

With promise of surcease 
To pain of longing and to love of grief ; 
Ah, now their presence chills 
The warmth of memory's life, of rapture past belief. 



XI 



Now do I touch the strmgs with fearful hand 
Calling their timid tones to fluttering life 

79 



In faint harmonious strife ; 
In dying joy the frail and failing note 
Trembles beyond command 
When into empty silence myriads slowly float. 

XII 

sweet with wordless ecstasy to hear 

The vibrant tone beneath the master's bow. 

In pulsing fall and flow ; 
To feel the rhythmic pauses throb untold 

Upon the spirit's ear. 
In music, most like love, love's ardor to behold. 

XIII 

1 have heard music wilder than the sound 

Of summer winds that rush through laden boughs ; 

A gay and sad carouse 
Of lawless strains inspiring sweetest dole. 
And pleasure without bound 
Where sighed and sang a voice from out love's very 
soul. 

XIV 

Ye, too, have struck the memory-laden lute 
Resounding in melodious song for song 

Within a heart Hfelong, 
Wondrously throbbing through the veins like fire; 
O, on your slopes a fruit 
Ye bear to satisfy a thirsting soul's desire. 
80 



XV 

Harmonious hear the roll of torrent! Hark 
Unto the songful swelling of the breeze 

Among the hemlock trees! 
'Tis music! There hath rapture an abode 
High in the lonely dark 
Wherever on the sense repose hath been bestowed. 

XVI 

O heavenly hills ! great joys knew I before 
Your godly groves my spirit's worship felt 

Through their high ether melt ; 
My tired soul toward your cloistered heights doth 
turn ; 
Endue me evermore. 
So thy white flames of peace perpetual bless and burn. 



8i 



DIABOLUS ADVOCATUS 

Am I the Devil who laid me down 
In full fatigue of sport to sleep. 
And slept as in a spell so deep 
As I had drunk my soul to drown? 

Meseems I stirred and tried to wake. 
But strangest silence drugged the air. 
There was no footstep anywhere 
To lure me where a Heart might ache 

And dumbly hail distraction's drink 
That my strong hand alone can pour. 
Skilful to fill yet more and more 
The cup, when nectar seems to sink. 

By night, when simple peace hath laid 
Her few to sleep, then I depart 
To find and rescue some sad Heart 
From dream of death, by love unmade. 

I make the Heart laugh down its grief, 
I personate a very fool. 
Whose inner spirit hides a ghoul 
Hoarding its hunger past relief. 

I play the mandolin and blow 
The luring flute ; upriseth then 
One of your heavy Hearts, O men. 
To tread in tuneful to and fro. 
82 



I am the spirit that laughs and sings, 
The soul of music, the lite of the dance, 
I am the odour of flowers, perchance 
The essence of manifold lovely things. 

I bring a vision from the dark. 

Smiling in promise of love's glow, 

I lull the Heart, I still the woe, 

I save you, men, from Hell's own mark. 

I am the Devil who lay me down 
In full fatigue of sport to sleep. 
And dream I have a world to keep 
From woe, and all men's care to drown. 



83 



PRAYER 

Clear off the clod of earthly cerement. 
Open the coffin where my soul is shrouded 
Under the sky of living immanent. 
Or be it bright or clouded. 
Open to me the sky! 

I give you browning roses from the wreath 
These heavy hands within were numbly clutching. 
Lips that were warm again beneath your breath. 
Throat to your tardy touching, — 
Open, I would not die! 



84 



THE LOST CONTINENT 

O GREAT Atlantis! Faint and vast you gleam 
Far in a shadowy past ; above your shore 
The mists of mighty ages dimly lower 
And hide your wonders as within a dream. 
Softly your pearly mountain summits seem 
To settle toward the ocean's shifting floor. 
For man shall view your beauty nevermore. 
Save in a Hindoo prophet's mystic scheme. 
Would I could know the past! O would my soul 
Could see, as in a silvery mirrored space. 
All that the world has done; discern the goal 
At which pale myriads of mankind efface 
The remnant of their spirit's filmy grace 
And fade into the universal whole! 



87 



BONDAGE 

Let the man live in quiet where he be / 

If he but think contentment doth abide 
Within the cottage where his loves reside, ' 

For he hath never struggled to be free. 
There may no promise serve nor any plea. 
To change his calm and draw his steps aside 
From that sweet path whose by-ways he hath tried 
Until he know them as his own country. 
So roam again, thou idle, dreaming soul! 
Regretful wander toward the misty shore 
Whither wild spirits troop as to a goal. 
To watch the later light glow in the west: 
Roam ever, shouldst thou still know joy no more! 
Perchance thou findest thus the future rest. 



L.eFC. 



88 



POSTPONEMENT 

Ye great hours that are few and full of love, 
I see you as vou rise supremely fraught, 
Out of the darkened pool that is my thought. 
Into the silver heaven spread above. 
Rise and be glorified as ye remove. 
From human bondage ye should not be sought. 
Nor ever more by my volition brought 
From regions where your perfect periods move. 
O lesser moments, smooth your petty way 
As 't were a blessed prairie for my feet. 
So that my steps shall linger not nor stay 
Until the day when time shall show the road 
Leading sublime where blisses lost and sweet 
Hold the high heaven in their divine abode! 



ASSURANCE 

The strong red blooms tower high, enshrined beneath 

By myriads of green leafy shadows pressing 

Jealously upward : clasping and caressing, 

Fold amorously they to screen and sheathe. 

Yet do they hinder not that others breathe 

Love's air, and breathing, seek that love's expressing. 

Richly they grant the lover all their blessing 

When the great tumults of his passion seethe. 

O roses, taunt the still heart with its coldness. 

And in his longing let the lover borrow 

Out of your crimson mouths a rapturous message! 

Well may ye fret a shy heart with your boldness. 

For, emblems of love's joy and of love's sorrow. 

Desire beholds you rise in glorious presage! 



90 



MISSED AFFINITY 

With intermittent words and measured walk. 
Two bounden souls, we paced the quiet street 
At darkest hour, and in my heart a sweet 
And hidden well was leaping toward our talk. 
But tell as if a barrier should balk 
The impulse of the inner flood to meet 
The air, hinder dumb waters to entreat 
Their freedom from an earthy catafalque. 
The ocean of the soul is deep and dark, 
O, shoreless is the ocean of my soul! — 
Earth-choked, rock-bound, chaotic, cold and stark. 
I hear the waters washing in the gloom, 
Mav outlet loose them from the earth's control. 



91 



SONNET 

Love, give to me the life of all the life! 
Make flippant joys to merge, make self to fuse 
With soul of fire! Give me new youth to use. 
New summer of sweet air and flower unfurled! 
Love, strike on me the heaven's terror whirled 
From space, that my dull heart may know the bruise 
Of love's supremest lightning! O infuse 
Our souls with swift fire in thy orbit swirled 
Forever! Love, shed over me the flush 
From planetary purple, pour the glows 
Of dawn and dusk, of sunlit midnight rose 
Through all my spreading soul, an airless breath! 
Bring on the night, let vanish in the hush 
My singleness, and after, love, bring death! 



92 



% i r\9. NuV W lyUli 



1 COPY DEL. TO CAT. DiV. 
NOV. 19 1901 



I06i ZZ 'AOM 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

018 602 288 9 # 



